Velvet Imperialists

I'm not a big fan of Dana Rohrabacher, the grandstanding Republican
congressman from California. But last week at a congressional hearing
on U.S.-Japan relations, he ably cut through the Pentagon's
doublespeak.

The hearing's topic was the
current conflict between Washington and Tokyo over the military
bases on the Japanese island of Okinawa. The United States wants to
close the aging Futenma air base, send half the Marines over to Guam,
and build a replacement facility in a less populated part of the
island. Most Okinawans don't want a new base or an old base expanded to
accommodate the remaining Marines from Futenma. The Japanese government
hasn't decided whether to listen to Washington or to its own
constituents.

Rohrabacher had a simple question for the
Pentagon official at the hearing. "How many U.S. military personnel do
we have in Japan?" he asked. Looking very uncomfortable, the official
said that he would have to get back to the congressman with those
figures.

Excuse me? The congressman wasn't asking about the
location of Osama bin Laden or the Pentagon's covert plan for Helmand
province. The number of U.S. troops in Japan - approximately 47,000 -
is no state secret. In response, Rohrabacher quite sensibly pointed out
that it's impossible to make a case for a new base unless we have a
clear sense of our capabilities and our needs.

Rohrabacher, of
course, was attempting to ride his hobby horse - the China menace -
to the finish line. He tried to goad the Pentagon official into stating
that China was a threat, but to no avail. The United States is happy
that Japan is strengthening its relations with countries in the region,
the official said, and China poses certain "challenges" but isn't a
"threat."

Well, all of that is useful to know. The official's
statement is perfectly consistent with the latest Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR),
in which the Pentagon pointedly failed to identify China as the only
threat on the horizon that could dethrone the current king of the hill
(a major feature of the previous QDR).

But if China's no
threat and the Cold War has been over for a couple decades, chairman of
the Asia-Pacific subcommittee Eni Faleomavaega (D-American Samoa)
asked, why does the United States need so many troops stationed in
Japan? Faleomavaega also wanted to know why the United States has to
maintain over 700 bases around the world and tops the list of global
arms exporters.

The Pentagon official couldn't satisfy
either Rohrabacher's anti-China tirade or Faleomavaega's probing
questions about the U.S. empire of bases. And that's precisely the
problem with the Obama administration's Pacific policy. We are trying
to maintain the exact same force posture as previous administrations
but at the same time emphasizing our new commitment to multilateralism
and our new status as a "global partner." It's like
Arnold Schwarzenegger going from Terminator to Kindergarten
Cop in the space of a year: Audiences above the age of seven are
just not convinced.

Most recently, the Pentagon quietly
announced that it will not build anything on Okinawa without the
approval of the host community. That might make base relocation on the
island a little difficult. After all, the prefectural government has
come out against any new bases (or base expansions). So have the mayors
of the affected communities. And according to a June 2009 opinion
poll, 68 percent of Okinawans oppose relocating the Futenma base
within the prefecture.

And it's not as if the people of Guam
- where 8,000 of the U.S. Marines from Futenma are slated to relocate -
are overjoyed at the expansion of their own base. "They are angry
about a major military buildup here, which the government of Guam and
many residents say is being grossly underfunded," writes
Blaine Harden in The Washington Post. "They fear that the
construction of a new Marine Corps base will overwhelm the island's
already inadequate water and sewage systems, as well as its port, power
grid, hospital, highways and social services."

If the Obama
administration is truly committed to gaining the approval of host
communities, it might soon find itself without any hosts at all. Here's
the bottom line: It's not easy to run an empire with velvet gloves. A
proper imperialist would have given the thumbs up to Rohrabacher and
squelched Faleomavaega's impertinence. A good old-fashioned hawk would
never talk about gaining the consent of a host community. At the same
time, velvet imperialists who revel in touchy-feely values of mutuality
and good governance are no good at dismantling empires. They're afraid
of appearing weak. They speak of the need to "maintain stability" in
an anarchic world. And they love to talk about how military bases are
necessary for responding to humanitarian disasters like tsunamis and
earthquakes.

In other words, don't expect the Obama
administration to pull a Gorbachev and begin to unravel the U.S. empire
of bases. Look instead for an insider who knows the system, as
Gorbachev did, to pull the plug. If some future administration chooses Andrew Bacevich
as secretary of defense - the Boston University professor served in
Vietnam and rose to the rank of colonel - we might actually see
Pentagon reform we can believe in.

In the meantime, where
should the Marines of Futenma relocate? I vote for Washington, DC.
Marines deployed outside the U.S. Capitol could promote democracy by
protecting lawmakers who support health care legislation from the wrath
of tea party crazies. And if the Pentagon's so keen on rebuilding
cities, parts of the District certainly qualify. If the prospect of
having U.S. Marines involved in promoting democracy, maintaining
stability, and responding to humanitarian crises at home makes you
squeamish, you can begin to understand how the Okinawans might feel.

For more information on our campaign to reduce the U.S. military
footprint on Okinawa, visit our new
website. And consider contributing
a few dollars to help us spread the word with ads in major media.